00:00Your residency has been a massive success. Tons of people have come to see it, from celebrities and just regular folks who love your music. I know my mom went to go. So what inspired you to, you know, take on a residency apart from, you know, doing other ventures just like touring?
00:16Well, typically, right? Tours are either a product of releasing an album or maybe a collaborative effort around grouping of artists. But it's a curated experience regardless, right?
00:33Yeah. And, you know, I think I've reached a place where I was entitled to be able to have some sense of a residency. If it were not in Las Vegas, it could have been, you know, in other places that, you know, offer residencies for some time.
00:54The one added to it is the fact that, you know, I would be able to still manage my regular life as a parent, as a, you know, a human being, as a curator, as a person who works outside of music. Music requires a certain focus. It requires a certain dedication in terms of times, in terms of touring.
01:18So residency was a brilliant idea in my mind. After the pandemic, I think that the world was kind of in a state of shock. We were still trying to figure out how to get back to normal. I think everybody was kind of tucked away. I mean, other than Atlanta. Atlanta was still going hard, which I lived in Los Angeles at the time.
01:41But, you know, we were trying to figure out how to get back to normal. And we put the residency on sale just before the pandemic and had to pause because there was just no functioning, active business at the time.
01:59So, you know, out of, you know, this quarantine and out of not being in social spaces where, you know, there could be a most of the people, you know, it was a risk. It was a roll of the dice.
02:16But what it offered was something that was the belief that we get back to normal. The other side of it was that I could get back to normal.
02:26I could get back to the thing that I love to do the most. And that was performing in front of a live audience, not just because I had a new album or, you know, a project that I was promoting or either an idea of collaboration between me and sharing the stage with said groups because we were, you know, touring.
02:44Yeah, but that was that was that was the the reasoning for residency.
02:52So how has it felt for you to have to extend it multiple times? Like people are just itching to go see you in Vegas.
03:01Feels good. Yeah, that was good. I'd say that there's no better place to be than wanted.
03:11Absolutely.
03:11The success of this, you know, you know, it speaks to a few different things. One, this dynamic of what it is that I offer as an artist regardless to rather I have a hit single or either a record at radio or record in the world.
03:28Yeah. You know, it felt good to get back to this concept of live entertainment in a very intimate setting, you know, arenas.
03:42They're really great. You know what I'm saying? But to be able to have a theater where I could curate a very immersive and, you know,
03:49a deliberate and a deliberate and tensioned experience where people come in and they know that they're going to get their money's worth or that they feel like they have a night that is elevated, a night that would not only be to remember because of what happened, but how you felt before you got there.
04:05Yeah. One, the anticipation because of the conversation, you know, you know, most shows don't allow cameras to be shown in Las Vegas.
04:15I welcomed cameras because I wanted people to see and experience that that feeling that is the true inspiration of why I am the artist that I am.
04:26It was these kinds of shows that entertainers put on, you know, in the past where, you know, you not only crooned to your audience, but you found a way to be social and serenade your audience.
04:40And she felt, you know, a connection to them through, you know, the theatrics of it, but then also to the emotion of it, the dance of it, the lighting of it,
04:51the culture of the places that I come from that I would offer kind of a snapshot or maybe a first look because people had never seen that culture.
05:00They don't understand what it's like to be in Magic City.
05:03Yeah.
05:03Well, you can't go to Magic City, but I can bring Magic City to you.
05:06I can bring a bit of this world of what we consider our theatrics.
05:13You know, when I think of Cirque du Soleil, I think of the women who, you know, are incredible performers and the fact that they know how to do these incredible things as pole dancers.
05:24I felt like, you know what?
05:25That's our culture.
05:26That's our opportunity for the world to be able to see it.
05:30And it should be put on a pedestal.
05:31It should be put on the most grand stage, you know, in America where Cirque du Soleil and Zumanity and, you know, Absinthe and Incredible shows offer something else that's theatrical.
05:48Burlesque shows, Magic Mike.
05:51The Thunder Down Under, you know what I'm saying?
05:54I felt like I could wrap all of those things into a very intimate performance that celebrates my catalog.
06:04But again, made people feel really great for the money that they were spending to come to Las Vegas and see the show.
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